Actually the idea for having enemies calling for help etc is pretty cool. Makes it more believable you are actually fighting "living" enemies. Of course, they need some more dialogs etc._________________

When we think about it, that soldier in the semi-cutscene player-punch is a bit dumb. If I see an unstoppable killing machine − sorry, a Japanese dark hero − slaughtering my teammates, I don't show myself pleading him to spare my life. I lie somewhere not too exposed and play dead until he's gone.

For that matter, that scene is absent is later demos… maybe a difference between "hero" and "ninja" modes?

TN just confirmed that the so called "Hero Mode" in NG3 helps beginners and/or newcomers to the NG franchise. In Hero Mode Ryu automatically blocks and dashes most attacks of his enemies._________________

Our pro-in-Tokyo Heidi Kemps sat down with Team Ninja's super shinobi Yosuke Hayashi on the floor of the Tokyo Game Show this week and got the inside scoop on Ninja Gaiden 3. Read our interview below.

G4: The dismemberment system from Ninja Gaiden I and II isn’t present in NG3. Does this have anything to do with Japan’s notoriously strict CERO rating system?

Hayashi: There are different rules for what we can and can’t do under undertain ratings in different territories, but that didn’t play a part in the decisions we made. We have a sense of violence and brutality we want to show in this game, and we feel like it really doesn’t need that sort of thing. We wanted to focus on what it actually feels like to have to kill someone with a sword. Once you start hacking limbs off, the enemy goes from being a human being to just being a plaything, taking that feeling away. We want the violence to feel human and personal, rather than having these characters be mere objects to be chopped up. We’re going in a different direction now, and we feel the old dismemberment system simply doesn’t work with that.

G4: You emphasize that Hayabusa is a dark hero who has to do bad things for a greater good. You also mentioned that there may be a sense of guilt as the story progresses. It seems like you’re really emphasizing the story more this time around.

Hayashi: Ninja Gaiden has always been an action-driven game. You kill enemies, you go to the next stage, repeat. We feel that, nowadays, there’s more to games than that. If we focus on the story as well, the combination of a good story and strong action can work together. That way, the combat you experience works on an entirely new level. It becomes more than the sum of its parts.

G4: Thus far we’ve mostly seen Hayabusa fighting military-style enemies. The previous Ninja Gaiden games always had a strong supernatural element to the threat them, as well. Will we see that in NG3?

Hayashi: Absolutely. The stage we’ve been showing off is the prologue stage. In the course of the game, you’ll definitely see a wide variety of enemies. That’s one of the hallmarks of a Ninja Gaiden game. We definitely don’t want to lose that. However, we don’t want to toss certain elements in just because – we want to make sure the enemies we do put in there work with the concept and story.

G4: Team Ninja also announced that they are working on Dead or Alive 5. You’ve stated that the concept for the game is “fighting entertainment.” I can’t help but think that might carry a negative connotation to hardcore fighting game fans, however, who view a fighting game devised as “entertainment” to be lacking in skill and competitive qualities.

Hayashi: Yes, we do understand the term has a bit of a negative connotation. We’re sure some people will hear “fighting entertainment” and think we’re just trying to put together some lame fighting game with no depth whatsoever. I assure you, that is not our intention. We have the base for DoA already as a solid fighting game. We will definitely make sure that it satisfies their needs.

But looking at modern game design – if you want to make a brand new fighting game now, what would you want to do with it to make it stand out from the pack? Where would you take the genre? It seems like there’s more to be explored there. We have the base, and we’ll definitely offer an experience that fans will want. But there’s a level of spectacle, fun, and entertainment we’re also trying to bring back to the genre.

G4: There’s always been a lot of spectacle going on in the DoA levels, but it looks like you’re really trying to make the stages an even bigger part of the gameplay. How are you approaching the stage design this time around? Will the levels have any element of randomness to them?

Hayashi: Any element of randomness we may or may not decide to put in is going to be something we’ll decide when weighing the overall balance of the game. We can’t really say right now what’s going to be in. We can tell you that we will offer a solid, well-balanced fighting game. Whether that includes random elements or not – we’ll just have to see if that will work with what we want to do.

G4: Going back to Ninja Gaiden 3 – Team Ninja’s last action game, Metroid: Other M, was also quite story-heavy. The story elements, however, received something of a mixed reaction among players and critics. Have you learned anything from your experience with that title, and how will you use it to improve the story presentation in NG3?

Hayashi: The story for Other M was definitely the product of Mr. Sakamoto at Nintendo. We definitely worked with them on the project, but that was all him. For NG3, we’ve worked with Masato Kato to create our own story. It’s going to be different in a lot of ways. There are definitely things we learned from Other M by working with Mr. Sakamoto and with Nintendo that we’ve applied to the NG development. The actual story that you will experience here, however, will have a very different feel. A “Team Ninja” feel, you might say.

G4: Masato Kato was the writer for the original Ninja Gaiden NES games. Does this mean we’ll see any crossover between the two different Ryu Hayabusa timelines?

Hayashi: Absolutely. There are some links – you’ll see characters from those games appearing in this one…

G4: Irene?

Hayashi: Hmmm, I can’t say yet! But there are definitely people you’ll recognize by their names. Consider they last appeared as NES sprites, however, maybe it’s a bit tougher to recognize their appearance… *laughs*

haven’t had time recently to make huge rant about what Hayashis doing wrong
going back to uni re-enrolment and all sorts, stressed need to make big rant,

no matter how much I rant about it and how much every one complains about it there isn’t going to be decapitations in NG3, which ok iv accepted that, but the reasons their giving for it don’t make sense, they really got to sit down and listen to what’s coming out of their mouths,

the things they keep saying about cutting down humans and not having dismemberment don’t add up, I mean in NG2 and NGS2 there where human enemies even in NGS2 where they bled glitter they were still human, it’s funny seeing how in NGS2 they seem to make human less human and now their making trying to make already human characters more human,

in the joystiq interview Hayashi says the “once you start lopping off limbs, your enemy goes from being a living thing that you're killing to just a thing”
which it don’t get, cos if you hit a character or cut a character in this case and an arm doesn’t come off it makes the character feel like a statue but it’ll feel more human right?

And if what he says is referring to the enemies that SOB is performed on which is like ever 2 out of 5, but then doesn’t that make every 3 out of 5 enemies in NG3 a “thing”

I really hope that we see some Black Spiders, cos we need them I like that there are enemies in NG3 that will run from Ryu but we also need human enemies that will stand their ground, the Black Spiders are to opposite of the Hayabusa, and killing these solders is not a very impressive thing for Ryu to be doing

Thay keep saying “cutting down a person” but there’s no cutting where are they getting this cutting from? Like iv already said about 3 out of every 5 there’s no cutting involved what so ever and then with the reaming to where SOB is performed which is the closest thing to “cutting” but even then it’s not really cutting is it because the second the sword leaves the body they guys back to normal he falls to the floor like everyone else there no evidence of SOB the enemy dies like every one else there’s no difference between and enemy killed by SOB or normal attacks, UTs or even Izuna
It makes the whole SOB system feel like a waste of time

I do like the idea of the SOB im even cool with it slowing down, but what they’ve done just feels unfinished,

I could see a lot of depth behind the decapitations in NG2/S2 be they from normal attacks or OTs, things like,
making Ryu seem like a complete bad ass,
it made human enemies clearly human cos it showed how fragile humans are that you could easily removes limbs and that even goes for the fiends no matter how big the fiend is it was still flesh and bone, and if you go back to NG2/S2 you’ll see that the cyborg enemies like the tripod ladies with 2 heads you couldn’t decapitate them so easily with nor mal attacks you needed UTs, and the sound and everything there was a difference between flesh and bone and metal
Also the decapitations showed how powerful the weapons where there was no denying that the weapons in the game where deadly it was clearly evident during the fight and after,

NG3 seems to be reversing all these things, the weapons are clearly not as powerful, i mean they can’t even cut, humans seem less human then before and I don’t know what they’re doing with Ryu, is he going to be as cool as he was in NG2/S2 where snapped back at the Grater Fiends with comments like “not im my history book” and “the final lament rechied creature that is death you smell” and even telling Marbus to stay out of his way
Or is Ryu going to become a softy by the end of the game

They could have done so much with the decaps and SOB together they would have complimented each other so well, they could have worked it in to the weapons upgrade like,
lvl.1 DS it would be hard to decapitate enemies SOB would be a common thing and the weapon would get stuck inside enemies barking comb
lvl.2 DS would be easier to decapitate with normal attacks SOB would be easier to get out off and weapon wouldn’t get stuck as often
lvl.3 DS decapitates everything SOB would be very unlikely but when it did happen Ryu would get out of it quickly and on his own no need to bash button, and very unlikely to get stuck but if it did it wouldn’t brake combo

the original idea behind the Obliteration Technique was the Ryu was ninja and the OT was there as a final show of mercy to this enemy, that he would just end them really fast, hence obliteration
go back and listen to the interviews that Itagaki did he mentions it and I think even Hayashi says it in an NGS2 interview
This idea of ending your enemy really fast as an honourable thing is something that is very real throughout the world, people probably seen samurai movies where thy take off the head "honourable death" exactions in Europe during the middle ages was also of a similar idea
It still exists in the Middle East where taking off the head allows the sole to exit the body unrestricted, im mean it's considered a sin to slaughter an animal with knife that you haven't made as sharp as it could be
And to bring it back to NG this was big idea of Ryu and ninja clans and traditions and allsorts so it seems like NG3 changing Ryu
I understand that the SOB is gameplay and stuff but they need to make it all fight in with the existing universe, they could do something like what Onichambra did where if you had blood on the sword and didn't shake it off it would get stuck in enemies which I think would work pretty well in NG

about this human enemies crying and begging for tire lives, that’s going to get annoying if all the enemies in the game are like that but thank fully they have now confirmed that there will be fiends and that the human enemies are the prologue of the game, I can’t see them the crying solders being the main enemy of the game, as the game progresses we’re going to get tougher enemies, which brings me back to the “thing” if the enemies past like chapter 4 are not going to beg for their lives and aren’t going to be even human doesn’t that make the majority of the humans in the game juts “things” and then on top of that Ryu’s not going to feel any consequences for killing fiends
That means the entire direction and aims for NG3 is focused only on a fraction of the game, and that small fraction has influenced the game in such was as the removing of decapitations and the removing off all weapons other than swords.

I think it would have been very cool to have seen Ryu chop off one of the solders legs and see him try and crawl away only to have Ryu walk up to him and end him, that would have done a better job of getting across the points Hayashi is trying to make about humans and Ryu then what he’s already done, and just to note this was in NG2/S2 yes the enemies where crawling towards Ryun ad not away but it shows that’s it completely possible to achieve with decapitations and gives a better effect

my biggest problem so far with the SOB is that we only seen one animation for it, it might be because the game isn’t finished yet, but so far we only seen SOB on the shoulder of the enemy, I’d like to see maybe stab in to the stomach and the SOB up, or even start for the groin, he could always go sideways through the stomach or down the spine… I think if I continue its going to get weird

Irene! NOOOOOOO!
NG3 officially ruined, im going to just give up now I could live with everything else but this has just ended it for me

But “you'll see characters from those games appearing in this one” gives me a glimpse of hope for Ayane and Momiji hell even Rachel and obviously Kasumi and the only man that can save NG3 at this point Hayate_________________

in the past he's mentioned that he's fan of TN mentioning a few stories about them and I think when it comes to TN and NG he does have a some valid points even if I don't agree with all of them, but I have to agree with this one,

Im always going on about the enrolment of the CIA in past game NG and now government agents practically running the show in NG and DOA, too much moving away from the original clan ideas set out by the original NG and even NG2/S2 and also every DOA game previous to DOAD_________________

The more I see from the game the more I am confident. I trust Hayashi and is team to make a strong new game.
They brought us a brand new NG with good graphics, blood and gameplay. I can't wait anymore.